Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2015 number

In the article the object of research is the history of creation and activities of the Tomsk “Society for Assistance to Gold Mine Workers and Employees”. This society played an important role in social support for the population in the mining regions of Western Siberia. It was the first such organization not only in the gold mining sector, but also in other industries of Siberia. The materials of Society (first of all, the official annual reports) allow to investigate the social-economic status of workers and employees of the Siberian gold mining (social origin, marital status, financial status, etc.), and that is one of the reasons to comprehensively study it and to explain why it has not been subject of the Russian historians’ scrutiny. Based on the analysis of the materials related to the society’s activities the author concluded that peasants and citizens prevailed among the workers of gold mining enterprises in Siberia at the turn of XIX-XX centuries. That was characteristic of the early period of gold mining development in Siberia. The author also comes to conclusion about professionalization of the main categories of gold mine workers in Western Siberia as many of them had a long record of service in gold production. This fact was also indicative of creation of a pool of competent local expertise with many decades of work experience in gold industry. The other conclusion is that the financial status of gold mine workers and employees in Siberia was very low, as was the level of their social welfare. Therefore many of them applied to the Society for personal pensions or for sickness, invalidity or survivors benefits. Due to the limited funds of the Society and a large amount of people wishing to become its pensioners the board granted small pensions (3-5 rubles per month) that could not fully supply the needs of the pensioners.